semantic drift

Working with Michael David during his Brooklyn-based artist residency was a study in process, precision, broadening, narrowing, loosening, clarifying, materiality, mood, longing and letting go. I went for the sheer fun of it, but was secretly seeking a swift kick in the ass. I wanted a bit of boot-camp. I was dying for a challenge. I embarked on the opportunity with a fair amount of light-hearted “let’s see what happens” style elation, but was quietly hoping for a solid intellectual shift, and in that respect, I got what I came for.

Working alone can be freeing–studio time creates the
feeling you are in control of all the decisions. But the real fun is in the back and forth–the
dialog and the shared experience.
Tossing around ideas, taking in the vast art history in Michael’s head–not
to mention his experience as a long-established artist–getting a variety of
perspectives, suggestions, opinions, and watching others thrive in the same
environment is, for me, far more engaging than working alone. It knocks on the door in my brain that, when
opened, gets the neurons firing, which is important. I find the science of creativity as
fascinating as the art.

The residency was compact.
The short turnaround brought a certain intensity, and it was clear that
excellence was expected. However, there
was room and time for everything: learning,
unfolding, collaborating, reworking and lots of discovering. There was time to really opening a thing up,
revise said thing, and revise again and again if necessary. Fashioning a group show out of the time spent
was the cherry on top, but the larger significance was how the group considered
one another—how we conducted critiques that helped the whole find deeper
meaning. All participants became immersed
in the success of the entire space, not just what we were individually
making. Michael made sure this commonality
would happen by connecting the dots early, and getting us started from a unified
idea.

The overarching theme, HURT, was formulated from of the
visual and musical beauty Johnny Cash created in his video singing the Nine
Inch Nails song of the same name. Trent
Reznor of Nine Inch Nails could not be more different musically from Johnny
Cash, yet the pairing became more poignant for it. This became the loose architecture that led
each of us to think about that which is disparate. Taking two seemingly opposite ideas and
merging them becomes more powerful, and has been utilized for ages (think
Egyptian artworks that merge the human with the feline). Michael curates the program to be something
like Yo Yo Ma’s collaborative group of musicians (Silk Road Ensemble) that poses the question: what happens when strangers meet? He plucked Louise Noel from Montreal, Jean
Pederson from Alberta Canada, Francesca Schwartz from Manhattan, Christopher
Rico from South Carolina, Pilar Uribe from Houston, and Deborah Kapoor and me
from Seattle. Joining this team was the
amazing artist and educator, as well as residency program director, Bonny
Liebowitz from Dallas. We all got in and
got to work after many weeks of facetime conversations with Michael David, and discussions
with Paul D’Agostino, artist, writer and Parson’s professor.

Finding your narrative was encouraged–to really understand
where you began was crucial. You were
also encouraged to distance yourself from the very narrative you worked so hard
to develop. For me, that progression was
akin to the process in a Richard Diebenkorn painting Michael shared with us in
which you can clearly see where the chair leg was painted first, and where it
ultimately landed. With the evidence of
his process so clear, you feel more connected to the work, and the painter
seems more human. The beauty of the
painting is the transparency of his struggle for the end gesture. As Michael often says, “truth is beauty and beauty
is truth (and that’s all I know).” There
are myriad ways to get to the core of what you are trying to achieve–to get to
this beauty. Dialog, questioning,
adjusting and more dialog are meant to get you focused, and then just unfocused
enough to do something that was successful–not obvious or overt, but just the
right balance of intention and physicality.
How Michael manages to elicit a unified narrative from seven individual
artists is a mystery—his big picture cognitive, spatial and mathematical
abilities are beyond what I can comprehend; I can only admire them.

I
ended up using a limited palette to approximate light and dark, and eventually my
project became an investigation of entomology
and etymology–fairly disparate areas
but with enough overlap to make me dig deeper to make the connection. The idea felt right to both of us, and it was
in keeping with my science-leaning tendencies while also pulling in my love of
words.

By the
time I arrived in Brooklyn, my loose idea was to create a visual biomass that
started with a few “insects” inching across the wall, slowly building, and clustering
in the upper corner. The concept also
represented word meaning shifts. The
assemblage would be constructed from sculptural elements made with humble
materials: steel wire, cotton string,
Icelandic wool, yarn and thread. I
wanted to address the incredibly small percentage we humans contribute to Earth’s
overall biomass (.006), which in turn spoke to my views on climate change
(we’ll ruin the environment for ourselves but the planet will be fine).

Plants,
fungi and bugs will outlive us and are central to our being. I am fascinated by all aspects of arthropods
and thus chose to feature them. From
bee’s pollinating everything we eat to the vast mushroom network beneath our
feet in the roots below that allow for composting on a large scale, we couldn’t
exist without these hearty insects and the vast mycological network that most
of us think of infrequently. In
addition, we benefit when we mimic insect behavior. Drones and some of the most sophisticated
robots are based on insect behavior and movement. We could also benefit from eating them, but
here in America, that’s still not a thing.
They are, however, used in medicines and have been for ages in nearly
every country. Army ants were collected and used as living
sutures by Mayans, grasshoppers have long been used for reducing swelling and
relieving pain, and a great amount of research has recently been directed
toward the synthesis and use of spider silk as a scaffolding for ligament generation. As antibiotics have started to fail, more and
more research is going into the medicinal benefits of insects. The list of insects’ miraculous contributions
to the health of the planet is endless.

A rounded steel nest created a wing-like
shadow on one wall, a dark, beetle-like form hung directly on the wall with a
couple small steel pincers at the base, a black-winged form hung from the ceiling
creating three shadows that resembled a lacey brassier, and a chandelier-like cluster
of these same elements (wings, arachnids, cocoons, arthropods, eggs, sacs) made
the centerpiece–a biomass bundle so black it was hard to decipher from across
the room if it was 2D or 3D. Lastly, the
minimalistic photographs of the individual elements were infused with beeswax
and hung out from the wall with specimen pins on four corners. Seven of them were strategically placed to
anchor the whole environment. They added
warmth and a touch of hazy soft color, and were skin-like. Suddenly the effect was just what I was
hoping to express.

That took care of the entomology, but the installation
was titled Semantic Drift. The idea that words change meaning over time
is fascinating to me, especially when they end up suggesting the opposite of
their original meaning. While
researching, I found out the word insecty
was actually a word! It became a joke
during the residency–so many things were insecty
(my computer cuts the “y” off every time and I have to put it back in as I type). But in 1859, it was used. Eventually it fell from favor from disuse,
but it’s still my favorite thing about this project. Other words not in use for the same reason,
as they relate entomology, are insectile (1620s), insectic (1767), insective
(1834), insectual (1849), insectine (1853) and insectan (1888). I also love the idea of word migration and
insect migration paired with word evolution and insect evolution–there is a
delightful play on words that speaks to all manor of things, from insect
behavior to group behavior. I saw a
video the other day of ants creating a bridge (made of ants) in order to invade
a wasp nest. To me, this represents a
hyphenated word. Visual synesthesia if
you will. I’m struck by the science in
the behavior. Creativity in people is
one thing, creativity in insects just feels so clear and profound.

By studying the chronological account of
the birth and development of certain words, and relating that to insect
significance, behavior, and movement, I was more able to create an environment
that held mystery and minimalism without being explicit. That furtiveness was significant because it unfolded
from all the dialog with Michael David, Paul D’Agostino, and the other
residents. It fostered the breadth of
the thought processes necessary to express the final project. Not to mention it was astonishingly fun.